Guess it's a bit better now

I'd also suggest that any multi-angled sprite games (that weren't pre-rendered) were essentially pixel art.  I think for Doom they actually used photos of physical models for some sprites, but even then there must've been a lot of direct pixel work happening. 

I agree (And as far as the process goes, this was exactly the case in Doom), and I think that considering them non-pixelart, is something that comes from the modern-idea of pixelart - today's limits are self-imposed, yesterday's limit's were actual hardware limits - if I could suddenly work with 256 colors instead of 16 for example, I'd do so

I'm sure the artist did use their tools to their full potential, and pixelart of the days used both the approach we use today and index-painting as it's called.



Quick compat between EGA and VGA (Doom Palette) - personally, I'd like to use most of the colors to make the transitions as fluid as possible and it's just tedious to do it by hand on every pixel (unless it's a specific detail part). Actually, since most of the 2,5d games had the dark-fog effect for atmosphere, and some transparency (using transparency tables) as standard, limiting the color palette would make them ugly, which obviously wasn't desired

Here's a sprite from Wolfenstein, drawn from scratch if you ask me.



Either way, you still have the whole character to draw.

I think most games used prerendered sprites or models, eventually with some hand touchups, because it's a bit less of a workload - pixelling a character walking, attack, pain and death frames ( I guess it's at least ~10 unique frames ) in 5/8 directions (depends if the character is symetrical) is quite a bit Some of the stuff can be copied and used (for example head and torso) but the rest has to be drawn in from scratch. I've animated a character like this digitally painting and it took a while

Bigger color palette also made it more attractive to use prerendered 3d artworks which was quite a hype back then while pixelart wasn't anything special - it was a standard of working with 2d GFX back then.

Creating a 3d game with pixelart graphics, is a tremendous workload. Some examples of such projects, and what limits they've used to lighten the amount of work a bit:

Amiga:

http://hol.abime.net/512/screenshot
Fears Amiga first person shooter - it uses pixelart for it's gfx, and of the cool amiga-style variety The characters are one sided though!

http://hol.abime.net/2739/screenshot
Gloom's enemies have more directional sprites I think, but notice they are pretty simple though.

As far as modern stuff goes, there's exactly the same two approaches:

1. Keep it simple stupid

Aforementioned Minecraft, which is really simple in terms of GFX (I'd say it's even primitive, since the pixel tech used for it's GFX is pretty low-level)

Or the idea of totally oldschool, 8-bit console look - for example the MegaMan 8Bit Deathmatch:

Lower res sprites, color limits - you can finish your sprites a lot quicker

2. Establish some kinds of limits - either directions or the amount of frames in animation:
Retroblazer - uses single direction for it's enemies, judging from what I've seen (correct me if I'm wrong!)
(Oh and not everything is pixelart there, IIRC)

Tim hits the nail on the head here.

Personally, the bigger the artwork, the less I recommend pixel art, since it's more time consuming and increases your workload. This is from my experience, but I'm sure I still don't have enough practice and it's possible to work a lot faster than I do. Either way, if you're digital painting the, or doing vectors of smaller game gfx pixel art principles are very helpful - especially with readability.

Straying away from the style and tools used for the artwork you've said something about having a hard time doing a character without a base - no matter, if you have problems with just drawing the character or the actual rendering, this is something where general art knowledge and practice comes in and I'm afraid this is something you can't jump over. Don't be discouraged though, it's not some mystical secret knowledge available to the limited few - they are more of a principles which you should follow, and practice a lot. Look for some art books, there are some which are available for free since they're out of print etc. Once you have the access to the principles, only thing what's left is practice both from your imagination and real life. A good idea how things work in real life - like shading, anatomy, augment your art tremendously, even stylized or cartoon art.

You've specifically mentioned characters - how about you start with some characters from the game you like and disassemble them? What 3d blocks are they made of? How light behaves on those blocks? What colors are used?

As far as pixel tech goes: The outline of the skin parts, using the darker skin tone, create a lot of banding. What's banding? Read about it here http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=8110.msg92434#msg92434 The double pixel lines on the top of the look weird in addition to creating banding. You might want to experiment with your lines - because of the nature of pixelart, not all angular lines look good - depending on the angle. Two ways to tackle it - either try a different angle or soften it with AA (anti aliasing - the previous link covers pixel art specific hand made anti aliasing).

If you have trouble with shading objects, I recommend you read about about construction - in drawing and in art in general. This will help you with both shading and with getting a feel of 3dness

In general this works like this - think about the thing you want to portray - with what spatial forms can you 'build' it?

Here's a page from Andrew Loomis' Successful Drawing Book:


If you know what shapes your object is "made of" and you know how the light will behave on them - you should know how to shade it

As far as your character goes - you could detail the ear a bit - if you want to keep it cartoon, you could go the MLP route and just add a line there - in case of a human ear, a line would just give a general idea of the tragus and helix (I hope those are the right names). Also, I find the "lidless" eyes a bit too weird. Just add ridge above the eye and you should be all set. Despite doing a stylized character, check out some photo reference.